Rape culture' in Steubenville, Torrington and your town

“If you look at crime statistics, these things happen everywhere,” Torrington (Conn.) High School Athletic Director Mike McKenna said last week about rape, robbery, assault and hazing charges against his football players. “We’re not any different than any other community.”

The comment was horrifying for two reasons.

First, because he was using it as rationale for denying that there is a problem with the football program or school district or that stronger action was unnecessary.

Second, because he’s right. Torrington isn’t that different from other communities. And that’s a scary thought after revelations that a significant portion of the student body – male, female, athletes, honor roll students - went on Twitter to call the 13-year-old victims of alleged statutory rape “whore” and “snitch” and accuse them of “ruining the lives” of the football players.

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Before Torrington, there was Steubenville, Ohio.

In Steubenville, a girl was raped by multiple football players after passing out at a party. Young men took pictures and posted videos bragging and joking about it in disgusting detail. Instead of rallying around the victim, the community blamed her and lamented the “ruined lives” of the accused athletes.

Susan Bigelow, a columnist with CTNewsJunkie.com, describes “rape culture” as “a social environment that makes rape normal, expected, and excusable, and which punishes victims for speaking out. It’s the mindset that causes people to say, ‘She was asking for it,’ or “She led him on by wearing that,’ or, ‘She was drunk.’”

In Steubenville, the victim “should have expected something like this to happen” because she was drinking alcohol, partying with a bunch of guys, etc.

In Torrington, the issue clearly is that students do not see statutory rape as “real” rape. Why were they “going after and hanging out with 18-year-olds,” the bullies asked, and why would they “snitch” on them afterward?

“Now the whole world views two innocent men as rapists, and dozens of others as ‘rape defend(ers)’ when no rape has occurred, just a law that’s labeled with rape,” one supporter of the Torrington players said in a letter to The Register Citizen. “Statutory rape does not constitute rape, the act of forced sex.”

Young men in Steubenville and Torrington, and with certainty, in other towns, believe this stuff. They do not fully understand what it means to consent and gain consent. They do not understand that statutory rape laws exist because a 13-year-old is a child who is incapable of consent.

And young women in Steubenville and Torrington, and your town, are conditioned to believing this stuff, which suppresses the reporting of sexual assault and recovery from it. And even if they do understand consent, what girl would not think twice about coming forward in an environment where half the school could start calling you a “whore” and “snitch” on Facebook and Twitter?

Schools, parents, police, churches, coaches and student leaders need to begin an urgent conversation about “rape culture” not just in Torrington, not just in Steubenville, but in your town, too.